Matt Damon Is Back In ‘Jason Bourne,’ But Why A Nine-Year Wait For A Sequel?

Matt Damon is getting back in action as Jason Bourne. Matt Damon waited 9 years before a good enough script was ready. The new trailer for Jason Bourne has arrived to carry Bourne fans into the movie’s July 29 release date. Matt Damon knows the impact the Bourne movies had on his career, and so would like to continue supplying his fans with what they want. To add another movie to the franchise, he had to make sure key elements were in place. One key element is returning director Paul Greengrass. Greengrass directed The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, and is the director most closely identified with the series.

Knowing that director Paul Greengrass is teaming up again with Matt Damon is the best hope for reviving the Bourne series after the disappointment of The Bourne Legacy in 2012. Greengrass and Damon are better together than apart, as neither have been identified with a movie series so closely as they both are with Bourne. They brought in a new era of realism for action movies, especially considering the camera fight direction of Greengrass, combined with the combat sequences by Matt Damon.

Matt Damon comes into this picture at the age of 45, nine years after his last Bourne film. Getting back into Jason Bourne shape was a grueling process. Damon spent torturous hours training. Damon told BBC what it took to come back.

“For the first Bourne movie I was 29 and I thought that was hard work getting into shape. Now I’m 45 and it’s just brutal. We shot this bare-knuckle fighting scene on my 45th birthday and it was a lot of work to get there. I was on a very strict diet and spent a lot of time in the gym just making myself miserable.”

Damon may be 45, but his Good Will Hunting co-star Ben Affleck is 43, and just went through the same experience to make himself convincing as the new Batman. But there is likely to be less opportunities for stuntmen to take Matt Damon’s place in action scenes if Greengrass keeps the same authentic style as his other Bourne series films.

Matt Damon didn’t by any means want to rush into this film. Only when a satisfactory script was ready did Damon jump on board. That process took about 10 years. But if Matt is indeed back for more Bourne, and with Greengrass at his side, then you know they both have finally found a script worth bringing into theaters.

Damon knew the importance of this movie to the fans. People would constantly approach both Greengrass and Damon on the street to ask when the next sequel was coming. That is why Damon is extra careful in crafting Jason Bourne to meet the standards set by his previous Bourne films. Damon further told the BBC why it took so long to work everything out.

“We both made movies that people didn’t want to go and see and it’s not something to be taken for granted. It’s a tough thing to earn an audience’s trust and so we didn’t just rush into it, we waited for 10 years or so and got a good story, and hopefully we’ve done something that people will want to see.”

As the Independent reports, the new trailer for Jason Bourne indeed resembles what made those earlier films great. But can the next installment of Bourne still be unique within the current action film landscape? At the time of the previous Matt Damon Bourne movies, the innovative approach and the realism went in a different direction than the over the top action trends of the time. But in the intervening years, Bourne has had both admirers and copycats, so unless there are more unique elements waiting in the full movie, Jason Bourne may not stand out as much as its predecessors.